


Checkmate

by Silvestria



Category: The London Life (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Regency, maybe anyway...
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-10
Updated: 2017-04-10
Packaged: 2018-10-17 05:47:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10587699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silvestria/pseuds/Silvestria
Summary: Dukes don't marry their lovers... or do they?





	

When Catherine finally quietly opened the door to his study, Leighton had sunk himself into a deep leather armchair and was gloomily nursing a brandy. Only one candle was lit on the table beside him next to an abandoned chess set. She closed the door behind her with a soft click and crossed over to him. He did not look up.

"The guests have all left and your servants are clearing up."

He looked up and from some unspoken sign and almost undecipherable gesture, she took the risk of curling up next to him in the chair and laying her head on his shoulder. She did not take up much space and after a moment's hesitation, he placed the brandy glass on the table and shifted to make her more comfortable, one hand lightly stroking her sleek, chestnut hair. He did not hold her close - that was not his way - but she did not mind. He would be glad of her warm weight against him, she was sure of that.

"And Gosling?" he said finally, his voice a rumble she could hear in his chest.

"Made himself scarce."

"So he has some instincts of self-preservation."

Catherine muffled a laugh into his shoulder. For a few moments they remained alone with their thoughts. Leighton reached several times for the brandy glass and once Catherine stretched out a hand to take it from him and warm herself with a dainty sip. His hand on her hair stilled but remained and comforted her more than she might have expected.

"There will be consequences," he said eventually and she could hear the annoyance bubbling close to the surface under his even tone.

She raised her head to look at him. "You will deal with it. And I'll see off the harpies. You may consider them neutralised."

His lips curved up in a sardonic smile as he briefly met her eyes. "I am very grateful." A moment later, his eyes flickered to the table. "Do you play chess, Catherine?"

"Almost competently." In fact, she found chess very dull but she knew the rules and had once prevented Henry from winning for an entire afternoon, mainly by playing so erratically that she had checked him several times almost by accident.

"Play with me then."

He shifted as if to tip her out of the chair and, with raised eyebrows, she obeyed and stood up. She drew a second chair opposite to his and then went back for the brandy bottle and a second glass. In the meantime, Leighton reset the board.

"You have white; the floor is yours," he said once she had sat down and poured herself a generous dram of brandy.

Catherine moved a pawn two spaces forward. "What were you thinking about when I invaded your inner sanctum?"

His eyes flashed up from the board before he responded with a move as standard for the opening of a game as hers had been. "I was reflecting that I really ought to be married."

"And so say all of us," recited Catherine and liberated her knight onto the board.

"It was the Duchess of Leighton's duty to manage this evening's crisis. She should have been here." His hand hovered over moving one pawn before going for a different one.

"But didn't the Countess of Kirkfries do well in her absence?" teased Catherine and recklessly moved another pawn forward.

Swiftly Leighton captured the pawn and lent back. "Admirably. More than admirably."

She flashed him a smile and then turned her attention to the board. She could take his first pawn with her knight in retaliation for her own loss but she was not sure what would be the advantage gained by that. Instead, she slipped her bishop out and across half of the board in the vague direction of the duke's still well-protected queen. 

"A bold move on the offensive," her opponent observed.

"And yet I am the one with the tragic losses." She nodded at her lonesome pawn sitting on his side of the table.

"Do you ever think of the future?" he asked her a few moments later, as he sent one of his own knights out onto the board. "Do you ever intend to remarry?"

What to do? What to do? There was no obvious piece that could be taken and if she moved her own knight she'd leave her bishop in danger of Leighton's knight.

"Sometimes."

But she could strengthen her own position.

"Think about the future or remarriage?" he queried, watching her examine the board.

"Both. But neither as often as you would no doubt think sensible for someone in my position."

She castled her king and castle and continued, "I have more money than I need so my future is assured and my estate is mine to dispose of as I please so I have no need of a husband to give me a home or protect me from greedy relatives."

In turn, he studied the board. "And without children, where do you intend to leave your fortune and lands?"

Catherine drank some brandy. "Are you my lawyer or my lover, Nick? I would prefer to meet with the Spanish inquisition at a brighter time of day when I am feeling a little cleverer."

He shrugged and moved his bishop out to parallel Catherine's across the board. "Merely curious. You are not obliged to answer, of course."

"Since I am not obliged to answer... I have no objection to telling you my thoughts as they are at present. However, I hope to live a great many years longer before such things need to considered seriously. There is a little girl of eight or nine, the orphaned niece of some of my tenants in Scotland, whom I have grown rather fond of. She is far too pretty to languish her life in obscurity. I intend to adopt her and bring her out if she is still promising in ten years time. She will be my heiress."

Leighton tilted his head and considered her, his eyes glowing in the candlelight. "You intend to adopt the daughter of villagers and make her worth more than any other well born lady in the whole land? A girl?"

Catherine had stretched out her hand to make some meaningless, time-wasting move with a pawn but now she lowered her arm and met his eyes boldly. "That is my intention, yes. Lots of men adopt boys every day if they lack legitimate offspring. Casta will do very well. I shall send her to school in a few years."

"Casta? Latin for chaste. A fanciful name for a girl of her background."

"Perhaps her parents were fanciful. I never met them." She moved the pawn.

He glanced down at the board and then up at her. "Careless, Catherine. You are making mistakes." He moved his knight. "Check."

"Oh! Damn." She glared at him and was relieved to see that he was actually smiling at her, his eyes crinkling at her. "You distracted me. That was very sly of you, Duke. I'm very displeased. You should have had the gallantry to at least let me win a little."

"I haven't won yet; it's only a check. You have plenty of ways to extricate yourself if you wish."

One eyebrow raised. "If I wish? I would be a very poor player indeed if I wanted my king to be captured. Ah, I see!" she added with a grin when he pointedly did not contradict her. "You think I am a poor player. Nick!"

"I think you lack strategy." He leaned over the table and took her hand, an unexpectedly warm gesture and she stilled. "You need to be better taught. You should play more often until you improve."

She clasped his hand back. "I will - if you play with me."

He returned her smile but she felt that there was some wariness behind it. "First you need to extricate your king and then you must ensure that he is well protected."

"Perhaps it is time to play my queen?" she suggested.

"Not this turn. Your queen cannot save your king in one move. You must-"

"Oh, I see!" And using her other hand, she moved a pawn into the path of Leighton's knight. "A necessary sacrifice, for you must -"

"Very good. Now you are thinking ahead."

The Duke took her pawn with his bishop to save his knight, she took his bishop with her knight and then - then he activated his own queen. "Check."

"Oh - you!" She flung her hands up. "If I bribe you with a kiss will you take back that move?"

"I will not prevent you from trying."

"I must deploy all weapons in my armoury." She leaped up and circled the table, took his face in her hands and bent down to kiss him. She had intended it only to be lingering and sweet but she had not kissed him all evening and when their lips touched, she felt the familiar floating sensation as she became lost in him. He reached up to clasp her around her neck and pull her down, responding with a hunger she had foolishly not foreseen. She stumbled forward and felt herself pulled back over the arm of his chair and properly into his arms. She went willingly, his passion tugging her own to the fore.

When they finally parted, neither spoke for a long moment as they caught their breath. Finally, Catherine pulled far enough away to meet his eyes. "I am much better at this kind of sport." She traced the lines of his face with one, gentle finger.

He caught her hand and stilled it, bringing it down onto his chest, kissing her knuckles on its way. "We all have our own talents and I am grateful to you for yours. And I - I don't suppose anything would make you reconsider remarrying?"

Catherine swallowed, suddenly feeling that her earlier quip of not being sure whether she was being addressed by a lover or a lawyer had been only too apt. "A proposal might," she answered with careful levity. "A lady may not entertain such ideas without one, you know."

"Would you entertain one from me?"

"If I thought you serious - maybe." She shifted to look at him fully. "But you had better not be serious."

He also looked at her, his arm round her waist tightening. "Do you think this is something I would jest about? Oh, I know people would talk, but they will do so whatever I do. Why not marry who I want?"

Catherine took a deep breath and sat up straighter. She needed space and air. "I quite agree. So you should. But... me? Nick... I am the last person you ought to be considering, seriously or otherwise. Dukes do not marry their lovers. They marry virginal girls of twenty with a pedigree as long as the number of naughts in their dowries. You know that perfectly well."

"You think I have not looked at them? Had them thrust at me one after another? Do you not think I am sick of their stratagems? Catherine, you must know I take no pleasure in being paraded in front of one girl with this accomplishment or another with that quirk and not an ounce of sympathy between them. None of them would have handled this evening as you did. None of them would I have wished to have with me here. None of them would have-"

She cut him off with a kiss, unable to hear him any more and quickly disengaged herself, standing up and moving across the room to stand at the window, lean her trembling hands against the frames and breathe freely several times. She heard him pause before standing up as well and she turned swiftly, holding her hands in front of her to ward him off.

"I am thirty years old," she said rapidly. "I do not know if I can provide a man with an heir, my fortune will remain my own to manage outside of my husband's control, I will not give up my estates, I am incurably selfish, I have not succeeded at being monogamous in ten-"

He had crossed the room to her with determination and grasped her hands, forcing past her useless attempts at resistance. He loomed over her and she shrank back, afraid more of herself than him. "And if none of those things mattered to me-?"

"They should matter to you. You're a Duke, Nick. You have respon-"

"Yes, I am a Duke! I can do whatever the hell I want." And he kissed her forcefully until she trembled. She pulled away before she gave in altogether to her desires.

He drew several breaths and then spoke to her more calmly, "Your age is immaterial - you are still young, I do not care about your fortune - I could marry a maid servant if I chose, and as for the heir." He sighed slightly. "The prospect of responsibility could well be the very thing for Gosling. Or the prospect of being cut off in favour of a village waif might have a similar effect on him." His mouth twisted up at the corners. "I hear adoption is all the rage these days. Catherine, if none of these things mattered to me, if I was utterly sure of what I wanted and what I wanted was you - for the rest of my life at my side, if I felt that truly and honourably asked you to be my wife - would you reconsider?"

She could only stare at him, her eyes filling with panic. "Nick, I am not a - not a good person. I've done - morally - some -"

He rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. "You think that holds any weight with me? When I know perfectly well I've been more of a bear this season than your brother in that stupid costume at that dreadful ball. I am bad-tempered, arrogant, I do not consider the feelings of others, I-"

"Oh, hush! We must stop this; we are behaving like children."

"Very well. Give me a straight answer and do not make me ask a third time. Would you reconsider?"

Catherine drew in a deep breath and opened her mouth, shaking her head, trying to detach herself from him. "I suppose - yes - I would have to reconsider. I would need to - need to think." She could not think then. Too much had happened that evening. "Time to think."

He raised his eyebrows. "Is it such a bad offer that it needs thinking about? I am offering to make you a Duchess!"

"Oh, for goodness sake, Leighton!" she cried. "If you wanted that sort of wife, I can nudge you in the right direction of several of tonight's guests who would be very happy to oblige. It is a very great matter for a woman, the relinquishing of hard won freedom."

"What would you be relinquishing? Your fortune and estates are safe from me, though I can assure you that even if they were not, I would never treat them with anything but the greatest of respect. You would only be gaining in consequence - and companionship." Now he looked truly anxious as he had not really thought she might consider refusing. Men were so silly in that regard. "I meant it when I said I wanted you at my side. And I will be at your side. The past month has been..." He looked away briefly. "It has been the happiest of my life for many years. Thanks to you."

Her cheeks glowed warmly for no woman could remain unmoved by such a declaration. She worried very much that he was only infatuated, a dangerous infatuation she too felt the tug of, that this was the kind of decision that he would live to regret, but she also knew that a strong part of her wished more than anything to believe everything he said. But no-one should act so rashly without proper forethought. She had been reckless in her youth and paid the penalty. Maturity had brought caution when it came to truly important matters.

And yet.

"I will reconsider. I promise I will think about it," she replied quietly, forcing herself to look at him. It was a good thing that she did, for the hope she saw blossom over her features made her caveat of not being able to assure him that her considerations would end in his favour die unspoken. She could only smile back tentatively.

Still smiling, he leaned forwards, his arm coming round her waist again and murmured into her ear, "Checkmate."


End file.
